Strauss returns to FCC as Deputy Consumer Bureau Chief

Karen Peltz Strauss has been named Deputy Chief of the Federal Communications Commission's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. She will focus on disability issues, among other things, and will help the Commission to implement the components of the National Broadband Plan that address access for people with disabilities, including leading the effort to develop a proposed Accessibility and Innovation Forum.

Strauss has over 25 years experience working on telecommunications access for people with disabilities. She is a co-founder of the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology, or COAT, a coalition of over 290 national and regional organizations dedicated to ensuring disability access to emerging Internet-based and digital communications technologies in the 21st century.

Strauss most recently provided consulting services to non-profit consumer groups, educational research institutes, and relay service providers. Previously, she served as legal counsel for Gallaudet University's National Center for Law and Deafness, and the National Association of the Deaf. Prior to that, she served as Deputy Bureau Chief of the former Consumer Information Bureau at the FCC. In that capacity, she helped initiate its first Disability Rights Office and managed the Commission's consumer and disability access programs and policies. Ms. Strauss holds a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and an LLM from the Georgetown University Law Center.